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W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

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Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#21

Post by porknubbins »

andrewstuart wrote: post #10

It saddens me that the Lord of The Rings was commercialised. It was one of the happiest parts of life - to be able to read the books and venture into that world. It's been spoiled for me by the ridiculous movies like The Hobbit (holy god, Peter Jackson turned Dwarves into ridiculous comedy clowns, covered Radagast with birdshit) , the endless licensed garbage and whilst The Lord of The Rings movie was quite good it h…

I felt that the Harry Potter films kind of missed out on what made the books so special. In the books, besides the slowly building adventure/mystery story, all the episodic, mundane day to day drama in the life of the school really felt like living through a school year in a surprisingly realistic way. The movies I saw focused on the adventure and lost a lot of that charm of feeling like you’re back in school alongside the characters.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#22

Post by gumby »

rcme wrote: post #13
csallen wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like the recent commercial depictions of the LotR series… don't watch them? Of course you have the right to criticize and complain about them. But to let their existence "spoil" your enjoyment of the original works seems excessive. The original works were not somehow changed by the creation of new works, and so neither should your ability to enjoy them change.

No man is an island. You can’t ignore what happens in the world.

Sure you can. I never saw the hobbit movies because I heard they had a lot of fighting. It’s a lighthearted book.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#24

Post by shrubble »

mberning wrote: post #5

I need to re-read it. I probably finished the last book 20 years ago. Then I saw the films. And in the intervening years my opinion and attitude towards it, and the genre as a whole, has shifted toward the negative. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just from getting older.

Have you read The Silmarillion, by chance? It gives a great deal of the background mythology of LOTR.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#25

Post by eredengrin »

andrewstuart wrote: post #10

It saddens me that the Lord of The Rings was commercialised. It was one of the happiest parts of life - to be able to read the books and venture into that world. It's been spoiled for me by the ridiculous movies like The Hobbit (holy god, Peter Jackson turned Dwarves into ridiculous comedy clowns, covered Radagast with birdshit) , the endless licensed garbage and whilst The Lord of The Rings movie was quite good it h…

I too love the books, I've read the trilogy at least 16 times and the Silmarillion at least 3 or 4 at this point (haven't gotten into the others yet but hope to one day). Yes, the tv series can be entirely forgotten. So can the hobbit trilogy - I personally don't mind if the tone is a bit more lighthearted, the book was as well, it was meant to be more of a children's book after all. But certainly much of the extra material could have been removed, and I don't think it needed to be a trilogy, two movies at most. The book has far less material than the LotR trilogy books do and the third movie dragged on forever on pointless battle scenes.

But as for the original Jackson trilogy movies, I think it's entirely possible to appreciate those as someone who loved the books. There are only two major gripes I can think of which are particularly inexcusable and a few smaller things I would've liked to change but which are excusable either for not being particularly consequential, or because of time constraints. Overall though blocking the two major complaints out of my memory, it's quite well done. For a twelve hour film to have only two major gripes compared to the books, I'm not actually sure if there are any other film/book adaptations with a ratio that good.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#26

Post by ggm »

andrewstuart wrote: post #10

It saddens me that the Lord of The Rings was commercialised. It was one of the happiest parts of life - to be able to read the books and venture into that world. It's been spoiled for me by the ridiculous movies like The Hobbit (holy god, Peter Jackson turned Dwarves into ridiculous comedy clowns, covered Radagast with birdshit) , the endless licensed garbage and whilst The Lord of The Rings movie was quite good it h…

> It saddens me that the Lord of The Rings was commercialised.

It saddens you that Tolkien found a publisher? How did you want them to disseminate? By the oral tradition in mead halls?

I know you mean debased beyond the printed word but that happened when Ralf Bakshi made his not very good cartoon and when Leonard Nimoy read the poems.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#27

Post by jdshaffer »

Tom Shippey, a very well known and respected Tolkien scholar gave a talk about the book vs the Peter Jackson movies. It also ended up in an edited version in one of his books (I cannot remember if it was "Tolkien: Author of the Century" or "The Road to Middle Earth".)

In short, he argues that Jackson actually did the best he could to present the book in a format that movie studios would accept, and even then was able to press through on some typically non-Hollywood elements (such as having at least nine main characters split across two to three major story arcs).

Here is an online transcript of his talk, "Tolkien Book to Jackson Script: The Medium and the Message":

https://www.swarthmore.edu/news-events/tolkien-book-to-jacks...

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#28

Post by trzy »

andrewstuart wrote: post #10

It saddens me that the Lord of The Rings was commercialised. It was one of the happiest parts of life - to be able to read the books and venture into that world. It's been spoiled for me by the ridiculous movies like The Hobbit (holy god, Peter Jackson turned Dwarves into ridiculous comedy clowns, covered Radagast with birdshit) , the endless licensed garbage and whilst The Lord of The Rings movie was quite good it h…

The Rankin-Bass version of The Hobbit was the high water mark for commercial adaptations and it's been downhill since then.

Re: W. H. Auden’s 1954 review of The Fellowship of the Ring

#29

Post by stevenwoo »

mberning wrote: post #5

I need to re-read it. I probably finished the last book 20 years ago. Then I saw the films. And in the intervening years my opinion and attitude towards it, and the genre as a whole, has shifted toward the negative. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s just from getting older.

I’m old and tried re-reading it recently and the low number of female characters and voices is really jarring now. YMMV. There’s so much I haven’t yet read I just moved on.
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